The National Nuclear Security Administration may have a $10 billion taxpayer-financed white elephant on its hands based on Britain’s experience with a similar plant that has been shuttered after a decade of failed operations. Continue reading The Bomb Plant: A MOX White Elephant?

Thanks to funding from the Colombe Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America and an anonymous donor, National Security News Service reporters spent the last two years investigating the most secretive institution in the federal government: the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its radioactive weapons facility – the Savannah River Site (SRS). Continue reading The Bomb Plant

At a time when science itself is under assault and the Environmental Protection Agency’s future is challenged, NASA scientist and global climate change awareness activist James Hansen spoke at the National Press Club on Monday in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL – a 1700-mile, $7 billion pipeline which would carry heavy crude oil from “tar sand” mines in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the Texas and Louisiana coasts.

Environmental protesters have been picketing in front of the White House in opposition to the pipeline. On Friday, the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs issued its final environmental analysis that said TransCanada’s proposed pipeline will have “limited adverse environmental impacts.” The Obama administration is expected to approve or reject Keystone XL by the end of the year.

One of the Bureau’s responsibilities is representing the country on global climate change issues. Its website says:

The United States is taking a leading role in addressing climate change by advancing an ever-expanding suite of measures. We have initiated a number of polices and partnerships that span a wide range of initiatives from reducing our emissions at home to developing transformational low-carbon technologies to improving observations systems that will help us better understand and address the possible impacts of climate change. Our efforts emphasize the importance of results-driven action both internationally and domestically.

Hansen says the oil produced through this unconventional fossil fuel process is “extremely dirty stuff.” In its place, he supports instituting a $10 a ton tax on carbon for 10 years and giving these monies ($600 billion by his estimation) to American families to offset the costs of alternative energy sources. “Tax carbon and give the money to the people. That would stimulate the economy,” he says in response to a question about the jobs the pipeline project would create. He believes that giving money directly to families (he says between $6000 to $9000 per year) is better than previously pursued “cap and trade” policies that would be overtaken by big bank trading instruments.

He is joining several religious leaders today in Washington protesting the Keystone XL pipeline project. Their efforts are to draw attention to “the moral duty to preserve creation.”

He says in his meeting with Senator John Kerry about these issues, the senator called his ideas “unrealistic.” With the Obama administration’s support for the pipeline and leading Republican presidential candidates who do not believe global warning exists or, if it does, humans do not contribute to it, he is turning his attention away from politics and to grassroots advocacy to educate the public on climate change issues.

Hansen says the country is falling behind on alternative energy research and countries like China are investing in future technologies like solar, wind and nuclear. As a physicist, he supports pursuing “fourth generation” nuclear reactors as one of the few on-demand power sources that could meet the world’s energy needs. He believes new reactor designs will produce less waste that is dangerous only for decades rather than the waste current reactors generate that is dangerous for centuries and for which there is no permanent storage facility.

Storage for vitrified waste at SRS in South Carolina. Photo: DC Bureau

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future is leaning toward recommending the establishment of one or more temporary nuclear waste disposal sites to store used reactor fuel. The idea would delay a controversial decision to embrace reprocessing as a means disposal.

California’s Brown Opens Up the Monterey Shale Starting January 15 -
It has been a terrible year for environmentalists. Anti-environmental interests had huge wins in the Congressional midterms. State legislatures became even more entrenched. Republicans, who now control Congressional funding, will challenge relentlessly the EPA.
So if a line in the sand is to be drawn, it will be by the handful of politicians who control blue states. The most important of » read more

www.dcbureau.org is a project of the Public Education Center, a 5013C Public Charity. The PEC hires career investigative reporters to conduct ground breaking reporting on major security and environmental issues for the sole purpose of public education.

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Environment

On DCBureau are a story and timeline about the history of the Clean Water Act and the efforts to undermine it. Together they show an incremental, well-funded, organized campaign to weaken the law. On the 40th Anniversary of the Act, it is important to remember that environmental laws enjoyed bipartisan support for years. Weakening environmental regulations through the Congress and courts will have lasting, irreversible results.
Read in The New York » read more

National Security

As the United States still remains poised to launch an attack against Syria, it would be foolhardy for Americans to count on the Pentagon for information about that or any other military operation. The days of reporters being given full access to independently verify Pentagon activities are long over. Instead, the Department of Defense has embraced the idea that it can tell its own story without going through the national » read more